Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Meatpacking, Texas storms, Ted Cruz

The second episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver arrived today on HBO, and going in, we had a good feeling as to one of the subjects. It felt inevitable that the host would take on the weather situation in Texas, most notably the way that it was handled.

Luckily, Oliver did not let us down! We saw an opening segment all about Texas, most notably the way that it was covered. He lambasted Tucker Carlson for blaming the outages on “green” sources, and also went at Ercot for their handling of this situation in advance. Smartly, he also went into what happened ten years ago, when local officials were told that they should “winterize” some of their power plants. This entire situation was a mess and yet, the country’s second-largest stake made a number of mistakes.

Oh, and of course it goes without saying that Oliver skewered Ted Cruz along the way. If you recall, Cruz attempted to travel off to Mexico during the storm, and later blamed his kids for wanting to go down and him wanting to be a good dad.

For the main segment tonight, Oliver went into a somewhat unexpected direction: Talking about meat. In particular, meatpacking. The people who work in this industry are never discussed, but they all have a number of important stories to tell. Take, for example, the tens of thousands of meatpacking workers who have tested positive for the virus over the past several months.  Factories can be highly-populated, and their employees are often working at a rapid pace. These are people who supposedly don’t have enough bathroom breaks and are forced to go to great lengths in order to keep doing their job.

Was this segment difficult to watch? Absolutely, given that Oliver focused greatly on something that many viewers out there may not know about. Yet, that was the point … and this is probably going to be a trend for this season. With the political environment quieting down, John seems committed to shine a light on issues that are out there that you may not have thought about in a while … or ever. This may be the latter.

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What did you think about this episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver?

Be sure to let us know right now in the comments! Once you check that out, be sure to stick around to score some other news all about the show. (Photo: HBO.)